Monday, December 28, 2009

My "plopping" Greenland-style paddle

It's more than 2 years ago that I carved my own Greenland-style paddle (GP) during the workshop of Tom and Dick from qajaq.nl. A day woodworking was too short to finish the paddle completely: the GP still needed a final touch: the blades being a bit too rough and especially the tips too thick. Today I finally started to finish this job...

Despite not being ready, in the meantime the GP is used quit intense, so it can use an overhaul-session anyway. For Greenland-style rolling my GP did a good job. But to be honest; almost any piece of timber would have done. Using it for paddling was not the success I hoped for. Initially I found paddling with the GP quit tiring, and later when my muscles had got used to the different style of paddling, I still had a hard job keeping up pace with other paddlers (using Euro-blade-paddles). Very annoying was the plopping noise the paddle makes every time it enters the water. I always blamed my technique. However, how much I tried and experimented with tips and instructions from experienced GP-paddlers to improve my technique (working on 'the canted Greenland-style stroke"), the plopping noise stayed.The revelation came earlier this year when I swapped GP's with Marc and Bernhard during a paddle after the Llanca-seakayak symposium: I was flabbergasted by the grip of the GP-paddles of Marc and Bernhard! Paddling with their GP's was a delight: effortless, fast and very quiet. Comparing their GP's with mine: their GP's are more slender. Which was no surprise of course, my paddle was unfinished. So action is overdue - it takes some time before this guy acts ;-)